Project Sputnik – Beta Cosmonauts chosen

First of all, I would like to thank all the applicants to the Project Sputnik beta program for their patience. Since we announced the program last month we have been working on implementation, traveling mostly uncharted waters here at Dell. After working through countless details and seeing what could actually be done in a timely and supportable manner, we have come up with our list of Beta cosmonauts.

The Beta Cosmonauts

We had hoped to make the beta program worldwide, but after digging in we found that the resources needed to execute on it turned out to be more than our little Dell/Canonical team could handle. As a result we have decided to narrow our Beta effort to the United States. From those applicants from the US, which represented close to half of the total number of applicants, we have selected 455 people.

It wasn’t easy to narrow the list but we picked people who represent a cross section of the developer population from start ups to large companies to universities. They represent a wide variety of skills and experience and are the people who we feel will be most vocal and participatory and who best represent the Sputnik ethos.

What they get – Updated Aug 30

Tomorrow we will send out the emails to everyone in the program letting them know whether they have been selected or not. Those selected, and who are still interested in participating, will be able to purchase the high-end XPS13 at $1,199 rather than $1,499*. As the program continues we will continue to refine the software. In return…

*Update Aug 30: We took the feedback re the desire for a deeper discount and went back to see if there was any more cost we could drive out the base price. We found a couple of places and were able to lower the base price from $1,499 to $1,349.99. Applying the 20% discount to this we are now able to offer the system to Beta cosmonauts at $1,079.99 ($120 less than before. It’s not a huge difference but I assume every little bit counts).

What we are asking of them

Load the software: While we had hoped to be able to offer the beta systems with Ubuntu pre-loaded this has turned out to be a lot more difficult than we had thought and would require shifting resources from our launch in the fall. As a result, unfortunately the systems will come with Windows pre-loaded. All the Beta cosmonauts will need to do is follow the directions for installing Ubuntu as listed on the Canonical page.

Be vocal and transparent: We want the cosmonauts to blog and tweet (hashtag #ProjectSputnik) about their experience as a beta tester, but if asked or when appropriate disclose that they received a discount from Dell.

Use it and contribute: As beta testers we want the cosmonauts to use the system, try things out, file bugs and share their experience with us and each other on the project Sputnik Forum. It would also be awesome if they could even contribute a profile or two when we make the profile tool available.

Support: given that this is a beta program we won’t have official support for the hardware or software. That being said we will try our best to help out the cosmonauts via the forum and bug tracker.

Thanks again to everyone who applied to the program. Dell and Canonical are very excited to hear what people think of the systems and learn what we can do to make them better.

Thanks Barton, look forward to it. Coming from work with mobile platform test tools, i’m particularly interested in the opportunity to provide feedback on the microclouds/deploy aspect as it applies (if it applies) to the Android profile.

By the way you should update your Google+ stream more often! Plenty of Ubuntu and Linux users and software developers around there.

When you say: “would require shifting resources from our launch in the fall.” does this mean that a full pre-loaded consumer launch is still going ahead?
Will the Fall (or Autumn as we call it in this part of the world) launch be global or limited to the US?

To try and put this into perspective, this a scrappy skunkworks project within Dell moving as fast as we can. We are borrowing people’s time to execute on this and traveling all sorts of uncharted waters here at Dell as we make the transition from incubation project to mainstream supported product.

When we originally sent out the note asking for Beta applicants A) we never thought we would get the amount of responses we did and B) our initial review didn’t show the logistics and time it would take to implement the beta program globally.

When we saw the time and resources it would actually take to make this beta program global we realized that driving it worldwide would have meant pushing back the autumn launch. We wanted to get direct input and feedback into our offering so when given the choice between no beta program and a US only beta program, we chose the US focused beta.

We are learning rapidly as we go and appreciate your patience. Thanks!

Perhaps a mitigating factor for all of us non-USA techs is to make some statements about whether the sputnik hardware is the same as the retail XPS13 so at least EU citizens can buy the retail XPS13 (& cash in the rejected/rescinded Windows 7 licence if they want to (or VM it)) in the knowledge that they can download ubuntu/linux flavour and use it on their retail hardware.

I don’t care about the price reduction – I just want a good hardware config that will work with Linux – for me, my XPS M1330N is not a toy but my workplace.

-=-=-

judging by the response and your previous comments, it looks like this shouldn’t be a skunkworks project and should actually be a strategic manouvre by Dell.

There is nothing different about the XPS13 hardware used for project Sputnik, it should be the same as the retail XSP13.

Regarding your last remark, i should have been a bit clearer. We recently received official blessing and are currently making our transition from skunkworks project to official Dell effort. That being said, while we are starting to get official support we are still out ahead of them at this point. 🙂

I would have loved to have made this worldwide. As ive mentioned above, given the resources currently available and the amount of work needed to launch a global beta program, it would have meant pushing back both the beta and the product launch. Our choice was therefore no beta or a US only beta. Since we wanted at least some feedback before launch we opted for US only.

… typing this from the old XPS M1330N. I’m also confused why it is so hard to offer an N option for the XPS13.

as a Scot, i’m also dissappointed to have been left out of the programme – a true beta test needs to have a wide variety of individuals; choosing users from a single country is just going to improve USA-only use cases.

For those who feel left out, you can buy on ebay or other places a refurbished i7/256GB XPS13 for less than $1100, and a new one for $1200 shipped. So, in return for our help, support, testing, bug reports, etc., Dell is offering zero discount. You don’t need to be accepted in the program to participate.

I’m sure the high pricing is not Barton’s fault, but I’m going to stick to my Macbook Air w/Ubuntu.

Hi Andrew as I mention in the update above we were able to go back and knock off an additional $120 so beta participants can now get the XPS13 for $1,079.99. Not a huge drop but we figure every little bit helps 🙂 If you can get a refurb’d hi end XPS13 for less go for it, we will take your help and thoughts either way!

The goals of the project haven’t changed, this is just the best we could do for the beta program in a short amount of time. We could have solved for the issues you raised but that would have taken resources from the fall launch and both the product and the beta program would have been late. We decided it would be better to act than wait. Our goal is deliver, get feedback and improve.

Hi Stephen,
I just checked with the team: The upstream kernel doesnt yet have all the drivers but thats our goal. Regarding the docking station, it doesnt appear that there are linux drivers currently available.

I already purched an XPS 13 before the beta program but I still want to help out. Are there any websites that the beta people have access to, for filing bug reports and such, that someone like me doesn’t have access too, if so can I get access to help out?

Awesome Sameer! Yep Sputnik is alive and kicking 🙂 If you’re comfortable sharing Id love to learn more about how you got your XPS13? Does work care that you are running ubuntu? did everyone get an XPS13 or could you pick from a couple of different offerings?

San Francisco State University has a bulk contract with Dell, and the XPS 13 is one of the choices we get. Others are: Latitude E6420, MacBookPro and a couple of Dell and Mac desktop configs. Of course, several people pick XPS 13 machine because it’s “ultralight”. I picked it because of our conversation at UDS-Q.

Work actually does not care that I run Ubuntu. In fact, they would like to know more about this option, so I’ll be providing feedback.

You do realize this is a beta program, right? The Cypress driver is in constant development. I applied to the beta program, got the computer, and immediately started patching the Cypress driver. Don’t expect perfection from a beta.

[…] Beta Cosmonauts Chosen – This is the post where Barton lets folks know that the beta participants will soon get an e-mail that entitles them to get a beta unit for $1,199 along with details of what we need from them so we can offer this as a product down the road. […]